Trail Closure: Red Sea Mountain Trail & Sinai Trail
In November 2024, after five years of operating, the Red Sea Mountain Trail took the difficult decision to stop all hikes and close the project. The trail stopped operating around two weeks after the official closure of our sister project, the Sinai Trail. The Red Sea Mountain Trail and Sinai Trail began developing over a decade ago, growing through the most challenging chapter for tourism in Egypt's modern history. They pioneered a new type of adventure tourism based around long-distance hiking routes managed fully by the Bedouin tribes who had lived around them for centuries and sometimes even millennia. Over their years of operation the Red Sea Mountain Trail and Sinai Trail put some of the most little-known parts of Egypt's beautiful wilderness on the global tourism map and helped create legitimate jobs and opportunities for remote, often severely marginalised communities; especially those of a kind that could help preserve traditional knowledge, skills and heritage that remains critically endangered today. The trails were hiked by thousands of people from all over the world and grew together into initiatives that diversified Egypt's tourism industry, underlined the value of its age old Bedouin culture and showed the most positive and inspiring side of the nation to the world. With the support of a community of hikers in Egypt and beyond, the Red Sea Mountain Trail and Sinai Trail had grown into the most successful and highly-decorated tourism projects of any kind in Egypt at the time of their closing in 2024.
​
The Red Sea Mountain Trail and Sinai Trail did not close due to a lack of demand. They did not close as a result of conflicts in nearby areas such as Gaza. For more than a decade both trails have overcome the challenges of regional unrest and dwindling tourism markets. Bedouin communities have kept trail areas extremely secure and hikers have always arrived. They closed because Egypt's government has in recent years taken deliberate steps to limit and prohibit the growth of official hiking tourism. Hiking permits became increasingly difficult to acquire in recent years and by the end of 2024 were practically unobtainable for hikes along any part of the Red Sea Mountain Trail and Sinai Trail.
​
Egypt's refusal to grant permits for official hiking activities not only means the Red Sea Mountain Trail and Sinai Trail are closed. It means hikes are not permitted officially in most parts of the Sinai, Red Sea Mountains, or any other part of the nation. Hiking is now allowed officially on only a few select routes, such as the tourist sunrise hike on Mount Sinai.
​
Whilst hikes do still operate in Egypt today they almost all go without the official permits the government rules are required for activities to be legal. This involves serious risks, including lengthy jail terms for Bedouin operators. ​​
​
Egypt's government has made hiking permits difficult to obtain for many years. Moreover, whatever permits were issued in the past typically held limited practical use. Official permits were often cancelled without explanation at the last minute causing difficulties for operators and discouraging future events. The Red Sea Mountain Trail and Sinai Trail were in previous years both forced to cancel hiking events during the time of their operation, despite having all necessary permits in place. Government-issued permits have similarly given our organisations no protection from the harassment and intimidation that have become all too common in Egypt under the authoritarian rule of its current military regime. Over our years of operation people at the Red Sea Mountain Trail and Sinai Trail were subject to threatening attention from Egypt's security services. At the Red Sea Mountain Trail our personnel were detained, interrogated and threatened with jail terms unless they signed documents agreeing to stop all hikes.
​
Whilst hiking tourism has been embraced by public-facing sections of Egypt's government such as the Ministry of Tourism, powerful state security agencies with whom decision making power ultimately rests in the nation have consistently opposed it, using whatever means they deem necessary to limit its official growth.
​
Egypt's government has not only shut down the official operation of hiking tourism but has attempted to silence public conversations about the shutdown. Within hours of the Sinai Trail publicly announcing its closure online the organisation was contacted by Egyptian security services whose officers demanded its closing statement be deleted. The Sinai Trail kept its closing statement live as long as was possible, editing its content partially before removing it entirely as the threats of Egypt's security services increased in severity towards people throughout our organisation. The Red Sea Mountain Trail posted only a short closing statement to avoid suffering similar troubles to the Sinai Trail. ​​
​
Although neighbouring nations such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia have shown unwavering long-term commitments to building hiking tourism into their national tourism offerings - recognising the immense value it holds as one of the fastest growing, most resilient types of tourism in the world - Egypt has continued to move deliberately in the opposite direction, taking backward steps that set it ever farther behind its closest tourism rivals in the Middle East. Today, of all major tourism destinations in the Middle East, official hiking tourism is restricted nowhere more heavily than Egypt. Hiking trails such as the Red Sea Mountain Trail and Sinai Trail are not developed easily: they take time and investment and the forced closure of Egypt's flagship hiking trails by its own government is an act of self harm that does serious damage to its adventure tourism industry, setting its development back by more than a decade.
​
Bedouin communities live in remote parts of Egypt and rank consistently amongst the most severely marginalised parts of its population: jobs and opportunities remain scarce in Bedouin regions and hiking tourism has opened legitimate employment to which their communities remain uniquely qualified. Bedouin communities have demonstrated professional excellence in guiding people through their territory not just in the modern tourism industry but historically, over many centuries. It is widely said the Egyptian government's prohibition of hiking tourism stems from a deep-rooted fear its ongoing growth will empower Bedouin communities who have always maintained their own unique sense of identity in the nation and who have long been viewed with distrust and suspicion by the state. If this was true it may go at least some way to explaining why the Red Sea Mountain Trail and Sinai Trail - Egypt's most active, visible and successful Bedouin-operated hiking tourism projects - have been the target of such focused state harassment and intimidation. Nevertheless, without a transparent conversation involving branches of Egypt's government that continue to stop hiking tourism, our understanding of the reasons behind their opposition remains only speculative.
​
The Red Sea Mountain Trail and Sinai Trail will continue to watch what happens in Egypt's hiking tourism carefully. Our organisations will continue to underline the status of hiking tourism as a legitimate and important form of employment for Bedouin communities. The Red Sea Mountain Trail and Sinai Trail were developed by Bedouin communities present in their respective territories for centuries and sometimes even millennia, giving them the deepest and most authentic roots. As tourism projects bringing unparallelled success and opportunities to their home regions the two trails will be long remembered by the communities around them and this gives our organisations hope that whether they return with the same leaders soon or with a new generation of Bedouin leaders in the more distant future these projects will be back. The Red Sea Mountain Trail and Sinai Trail both express the biggest, most sincere thanks to the hikers who walked the routes and to everybody who supported their growth through challenging times in Egypt over the last decade. As much as these projects were successful because of the Bedouin communities around them, they grew because of the extraordinary support from people elsewhere in the world. Our organisations will forever remember our encounters with those who helped our trails and look forward to meeting again on the trail, whenever it may be.